Latest / True Crime and Wine Time / EXCLUSIVE SCOTT HUVER, Author & His Book BEVERLY HILLS NOIR

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EXCLUSIVE SCOTT HUVER, Author & His Book BEVERLY HILLS NOIR · True Crime and Wine Time

• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, yeah, Hello, everybody, Welcome to True Crime in
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: one time. I am still JT and I am joined
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: by with words words it is Terry. Oh. I keep
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: looking at that picture that shows up on the intro
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: video and I'm like, boy, I feel a lot older
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: than that.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I heard the greatest commercial I forget what the product was,
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: and it says no one wants to talk about aging,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: but it's happening to each and every one of us
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: every day.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: There there there was a new song and this is
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: what we can end kind of the intro with, but
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: there was there's a new song that Bowling for Soup
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: put out, which of course is one of the bands
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that I like, and it's getting old sucks, but everybody's
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: doing it, and that's that's I was like, boy, this
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: came out at just the right, wrong, right time. So well,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: let's let's let's let's bring on the individual who we
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: are all here for. Just to give a quick introduction. Uh.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Scott Hoover is an accomplished journalist, author, and Hollywood insider
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: known for his unique ability to delve into the untold
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: stories of LA's most iconic neighborhoods and with a keen
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: eye for detail and a deep understanding of the city's
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: colorful history, Scott brings a fresh perspective to the world
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: of true crime. His latest work, Beverly Hills Noir, takes
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: readers beyond the glitz and glamour of the city, uncovering
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the dark, gritty realities lurking beneath its pristine surface, and
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Scott's expertise and blending fact with intrigue has made him
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: a respected figure among readers who are eager to explore
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the shadowy corners of the world's most famous zip codes,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and tonight we are thrilled to have him with us
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: to discuss his captivating journey through that side of Beverly Hills,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and the mysteries he's uncovered, and the enduring allure of
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: true crime in Hollywood. So welcome, Scott. How are you doing.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: I'm great. How are you guys doing.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I'm all right. I hope the intro was okay. I always,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: you know, try to make somebody blush before they you know,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I just throw them on the screen.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know if you can see it, but yeah,
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: I'm deep Crimson right now.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, we are very excited to have you here, and I'm.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Excited to be here, so you guys can hit me
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: with I know you have to have burning questions about
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: crime in nine O two one.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: L I do. But first I have to say I
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: am drinking my good old stand by tonight Kim Crawford
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Saven Young Blanc, because it's still to flip and' hot
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: in Texas to drink red wine even though it's October thirty.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: First, I'm hitting a little gentleman Jack with the splash
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: of diet coke because I figure we'll probably talk about
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: Frank Sinatra h today and he would approve.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: He would approve.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: He might not approve the splash of die coke, but
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: he would approve the Jack Daniels.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: He certainly would not approved my Sam Adams right now.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: But here we are. That's what I had. Oh forgive me.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: I will tell you as somebody that's gonna age me quickly.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: But I there was a point in my time that
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: I watched the show nine oh two one oh and
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: I lived and breathed by it, and I always thought
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: that that's truly what nine O two one O was like,
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: along with Melrose Place, until I became an actual adult
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: and I realized, oh, yeah, that is truly just TV fiction.
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Beverly Hills teens are more like the Menendez brothers.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Who were in the news.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: Again, yeah I'm joking, but you know, yeah, it's that
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: was that was a night fantasy, the TV series, and
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: it did capture a little bit of the not super
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: rich side of Beverly Hills, the pretty rich side of
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: Beverly Hills. But there's definitely like kind of jokingly called it,
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: like a working class Beverly Hills. There's a whole you know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: south of south of Santa Monica is the what they
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: used to call the slums of Beverly Hills. But they're
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: still pretty nice.
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: I six say, compared Dust in Texas, that's still very
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: very nice. Yeah. People laugh because we lived in Brentwood
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: and they're all like, oh, you lived were oj And
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: I'm like, no, we lived in the San Francisco version
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: of Brentwood, the actual city of Brentwood, and it was
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: nothing like Southern cal. Northern Cal's totally different.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: I'm from Michigan and went back and there did a
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: story on on Beverly Hills, Michigan, which is near Detroit,
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: and it's kind of a very affluent suburb and they
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: at the time, this was in the nineties, they actually
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: had a celebrity resident, Tim Allen, lived in Beverly Hills, Michigan.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: I don't know if he still has all but that
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: was that was a fun discovery.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's interesting. That's not a place that I would assume.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I've been to Michigan a couple of times and they
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: have a lot of snow and it's really cold.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So which is why.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: Which is why I live in southern California.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out what you like, though, Terry,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: because you don't like the hot in October, but you
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: don't like the cold in Michigan. I'm where do we
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: okay now? Listen.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: I like it when it's supposed to be hot. I
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: like to have four seasons, okay. I mean, could we
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: have fall? Could it be like eighty instead of ninety?
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: No, we can't have nice things. We know this now.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm okay when it snowed in Austin twice
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: since we've lived here in seven years, I was okay
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: with that, but I don't want it ninety degrees in October,
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: So I'm never happy. I'm a woman what can I say.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: I'm never.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: That's a trap. I'm not responding. Uh, we just not
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: we just not all right, Terry. You want to you
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: want to kick us off?
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I do because I am excited. I loved the book.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: I learned some great things about the book. So I
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: want to know, So Beverly Hills Normal dives into the
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: dark underbelly of Beverly Hills. I want to know what
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: inspired you to write about the darker side of Beverly Hills.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, I write about this a little bit
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: in the book. But when I moved to Los Angeles,
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: I happened to arrive the week of the OJ Simpson
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: Bronco Chase and actually see it myself from my bedroom window,
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: as I lived about a block from the four oh five.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: And you know, I hadn't gotten a job yet. And
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: within a week I'd gotten a job at this newspaper
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: that had been around at the time for thirty years,
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: still around now sixty years old, and it's called The
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: Beverly Hills Career. And I had only ever written lighthearted
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: stuff as a as a college journalist, and this was
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: my first job out of school, and I got thrown
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: into you know, the meat grinder of all the serious stuff,
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: covering city hall meetings, covering school board meetings, all this
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: like very you know, important to the community stuff. And
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: one of those things was the police and crime beat,
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: and that one I kind of took to. That one
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: I was both really excited about and also very nervous about,
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: because this was, you know, this is people's lives, and
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: these are you know, horrible things happening to people sometimes.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: So I was very very cautious and careful about wanting
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: to get everything just right. And I didn't realize at
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: the time that I was coming in just after a
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: big kerfuffle between the newspaper and the police department where
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: there was a lot of distrust on both sides, and
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: I was just a young kid in my twenties going
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: I just want to know about cool crimes and doing
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: that and getting close to the police and getting their
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: trust and learning about how they, you know, ran the
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: department and the different kinds of crimes they took on,
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: and the history that it had, the kinds of crazy
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: crimes that had happened throughout the history of Beverly Hills,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: which has been a city of the rich and famous
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: since its earliest days. I became fascinated with that side
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: of things, and so I just started collecting these stories,
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: you know. Sometimes I'd write about them in the newspapers,
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: and some of them caught my fancy, and I just
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: kind of kept researching them over the years as I
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: transitioned into being an entertainment reporter. And there's something something
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: irresistible about knowing what's under all the all the gloss
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: and the glitz and the glam, that there's all kinds
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: of like human dramas playing out in very dark ways.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Sometimes somebody brings the trouble to Beverly Hills, sometimes somebody
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: is the trouble within Beverly Hills, and that just fascinates me.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, I will say, after reading your book, I
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: want to go to a city hall meeting or a
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: city council meeting, because you talked about was it Charleston Heston.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: Charlton Heston used to call me in my office about
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: like you.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: Know, and I was like, really they go to those meetings.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: But then I think about it, that was their town.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're still everyday people.
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: It was such an interesting time. I don't know, because
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: I haven't covered a lot of the civic stuff in
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: a while. I don't know if that still happens. It
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: doesn't feel like Beverly Hills is quite the insular celebrity community.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Not just celebrities, but heads of major companies and royalty
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: from different countries and all kinds of like prominent people
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: from in different walks of life. But when I came
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: in the mid nineties, it still had this like small
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: town feel with very very famous people living there. So
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: you'd see, as I mentioned in the book, you know,
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: you'd see Jack Lemon at a city council meeting because
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: his neighborhood done something to annoy him and he wanted
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: to complain about it, or you know, I went to
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: lunch with Valley Harper to talk about the school system
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: for that and it was it was fascinating. I used
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: to go, I mean I used to see I just
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: told Jamie Lee Curtis's the other day when I saw her.
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: I used to see her dad, Tony Curtis, like almost
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: like three times a week because he would go to
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: all these boutique openings on Rodeo Drive and any any
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: party within the city. You'd almost always see Tony Curtis there.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: And he was a lovely guy. It was a lot
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: of fun and it was just so Coming from a
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: small town in Michigan, I liked the hominess of that community.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: But then the surreality that these people were usually famous.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: You know, you'd go walk on Rodeo Drive, walk into
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: an appointment somewhere and you walk past Dick Van Dyk
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: or Suzanne Summer's just shopping which window shopping, and that
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: was Those are real things that happened to me.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: You know, like those things don't surprise me as much
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: as them going to city council meetings or things, because
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: I would think, don't they have a house assistant or
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: personal assistant who would go and do that for them?
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: A lot of times they liked to bring their own
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: the weight of their own celebrity to their cause, do
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, just to get the
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: point across, they meant business.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those run ins in Richmond, Virginia, I will say
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: how much of.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: That we've had. We have some in Austin area that
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: we've run into in the seven years we've been here,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: and we lived in Vegas for four years. Vegas saw
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: them all the time. I mean, it was it was
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: a common occurrence.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: But now, with all of the different cases that you
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: learned about, how did you pick the specific cases that
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: you decided to write about.
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: That's a great question. I have enough cases to fill
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: probably four books, and I wrote two books worth of
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: stories and had to settle on what I wanted to
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: get into this one. The first thing I did was
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: I knew I couldn't quite with the space I would have.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: I didn't want to tackle something like the Menendez Brothers
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: or you know, going back Lana Turner Johnny Stampinado, which
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: is a very famous case from the from the fifties.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: Some of these stories were just too big to fit
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: in an anthology format, and they've been written about. So
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: I wanted to zero in on stories that you might
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: have heard something or be familiar with some of the
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: people in it, or that were just so to me
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: mind boggling and fit that Beverly Hills mold so well
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: that I wanted to tell you, you know, these stories,
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: and within that, I tried to kind of pop around
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: to different genres of stories and different types of crimes.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: So I didn't want to just have murder murder, murder murder.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: I wanted to have murder, cat burglar, love triangle with gunplay,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: you know, bar room brawl that's ugly, a hostage standoff,
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: shoplifting with a famous face at the center of it.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: You know. I wanted these these stories to to have
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: a different feel and that way when I wrote them,
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: I could also do different styles of storytelling. The story
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: in the beginning, the first murder of Beverly Hills is
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: very chinatown esque, you know, politics heavily on the story.
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: The story about the cat burglar in the nineteen forties
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: through our dentis is very to catch a thief for
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: catch me if you can, very heisty capery. You know.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: The hostage standoff from the eighties at Van Cleef and
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: Arpels on Rodeo Drive is very much dog Day Afternoon.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: So I wanted to I wanted that that kind of diversity,
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: and I wanted that sweep of history. So that helped
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: me land on the ones that that I did. I
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: didn't because of space consiraints. I couldn't get anything in
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: from the seventies in this volume, and the seventies stories
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: are the craziest ones. But I was pretty happy with
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: with the scope of what I was able to get
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: in Well.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: I will say I loved the scope because it did go,
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: you know, to different ones, and I really liked that.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I will say I learned a lot of things about
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: one own a writer that I didn't know. I had
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: to text and I was like, okay, that really blew
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: my mind, really blew my mind.
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: That one, that chapter in particular, is really that was
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: an interesting one to dig into because I covered it
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: at the time. I was I was physically myself in
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: the courtroom as it was unfolding.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: And that for the verdict, right, wasn't that one? You
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: had jury duty?
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: I got, of all things. I got called to jury
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: duty the day the verdict came in and I got
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: out of jury duty, but it took me all day.
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: So yeah, that and you know, and to have encountered her,
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: you know many times since since she's really reclaimed her
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: career and is doing fine. That's that one is a
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: very unique one because I have my own perspective on it.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: But it was also a big story. But while you
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: might know that when on a writer was arrested for shoplifting,
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: you don't know all the details because it was it
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: turned into very much a courtroom drama.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I thought she stole a tube of lipstick. I put
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: in our group chat that we have with our producer,
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I always thought she stole a tube of lipstick.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: Where was I for thousand dollars worth of of you know,
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: accessories and more drubs?
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: Well, she even took scissors. I mean, this girl was prepared.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: I mean I give her credit for being prepared.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that becomes a big point in the in the
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: trial too, is the premeditation factor, because she did seem
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: to have really known exactly what she was doing and
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: what she had come there to do, while spending plenty
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: of money on legitimately on stuff to kind of cover
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: her tracks. She was you know, I hate to get
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: too too snarky about her, because it's clear she was
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: in a bad place and was experiencing some some real
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: tough mental times and some addiction to painkiller. And I
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: think we almost all of us now somebody who's gone
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: through that, and so I try not to be too
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: judging about it. But it was a it was definitely
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: a really bizarre especially it wasn't like she was washed up.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: She was still at the top of her sta. She was,
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: so it's it's it's crazy, but I am glad to
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: see that she does seem to have put her life
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: very much back together and and you know, got her
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: career back on track as well.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: I said. After I read it, I texted a friend
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: and I said, Okay, why Nona grew up, got help,
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: and she proved that your past does not have to
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: define your future. That's what I took from it.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: And I think one of the interesting things is, you know,
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: Hollywood was ready to welcome her back immediately after the
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: truck was she was guilty.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: She was guilty, and they.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: They couldn't welcome her back because of the insurance issues.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: The insurance companies that insure movie movie shoots, we weren't
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: really quite ready to take the risks. So she had
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: to take her time improve herself. And I think that
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: was really important for her to getting herself back together.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: The fact that she did have to sit on the
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: bench a little bit and used that time constructively to
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: you know, put put the pain killers behind her and
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: get herself recentered. I think that was huge and I
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: think she would say the same thing. So yeah, but
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: I meane, it was up to Hollywood, she would have
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: been in a movie within a month.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Of you know, and I think it's good that she wasn't, so,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: I mean it shows sometimes taking a step back. It's
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: not a bad thing. So while you were writing this,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: did you because you were already a seasoned reporter there,
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: you already knew a lot of information, But did you
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: uncover any surprising or shocking things that you didn't know
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: while researching?
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: You know, I did. I didn't have a ton of
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: time to talk to like hundreds of people for the book, specifically,
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: especially with all the chapters and all the history. I
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: did reconnect with several retired police officers that I knew
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: from back in the day for some of the more
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: contemporary stories, and I did find out every time I
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: talked to somebody, I found out some new element that
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: blew my mind. Probably the biggest one is in one
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: of the cases that didn't make the book, and it's
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: it was kind of a bombshell, But that'll hopefully be
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: in a second book. I'm trying to think of one
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: from here, just the story. There's a story of one
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: of the things that I covered myself about the two guys.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: One was an ex cop from Detroit and his brother
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: and they had come to la he'd broken out of
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: prison out of a prison farm in the Upper Peninsula,
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Michigan and come to southern California and was you know,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: had been robbing banks in Detroit before he left, using
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: an fake explosive device like a bomb, saying like I'll
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: blow this bomb up if you don't give me x
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: mount money. So they'd come out to La and they
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: had put they hired an f company like a makeup
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: special effects a mark, and.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: They learned how to turn. Didn't they go from being
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: an African American to white or something?
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: Yet the guy transformed them from black to white. Now
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: they only spent so much money, and it was very
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: like obvious that they that it wasn't real. It was
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: like you know the movie White Chicks.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: And so when they walked in the bank, they were
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: almost the jig was up almost immediately and it turned
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: into a wild car chase. But what was what I
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: didn't know about that is when the police, when Beverly
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Hills police went to the apartment where they had been
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: living down in the sort of South Bay area, they
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: found an explosive device in there, and they were very
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: worried and that it might it could go off, and
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: one of the cops who was a veteran, he was
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the longest serving cop on the forest, said you know,
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's fake and went in and sure enough
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: it turned out to be fake.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: Kind of a big risk to take, but.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: I like, that's risky.
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And that correlated with what I knew about the
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: Detroit crimes with the bank robberies, that they used to
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: fake explosive and I had never known that in the
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: you know, nearly thirty years since that story first took place,
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: and so that was kind of a fun discovery.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Now, you covered a lot of high profile individuals, you
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: talked about them. How do you think fame and status
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: affect the criminals and the police investigating the cases.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: One of the interesting things I think about the Beverly
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Hills Police Department is that they are notoriously uncorrupt throughout
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: the history of the city when LA had a very
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: famously corrupt police force in the forties and fifties. And
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: one of the reasons I speculate is because there was
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: so much attention on Beverly Hills almost from the very beginning.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: It was a city of the rich and famous, from
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: the nineteen from nineteen fourteen, when it really first became
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: a city. This movie Stars came in very shortly after that,
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: so it always had a lot of attention on it.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: And of course it's a city where you know, every
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: third person has a law degree. So the Beverly Hills
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: Police Department has had a long tradition of being very
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: by the book, very above board, very like closed ranks,
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: Like they don't they don't share a lot of secrets,
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: they don't put a lot out into the media to
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: kind of make things happen in their in their solving cases,
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: like they just are very methodical because they know there's
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: so much attention on them and they're ripe to be sued,
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: they're ripe to be accused of this that the other thing,
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: So they didn't have that kind of corruption problem. Then
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: you've got the populace, who many of which think they
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: are above and beyond the law because of their wealth
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: and their their power and their fame, and that that
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: does come into play still today in some cases. And
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: and you also have the notion that Beverly Hill is
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: some kind of big gold mine for criminals from people
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: coming from the outside, that there's so much stuff to
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: be taken. Now professional criminals know that it's it's kind
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: of a common commonly said thing among amongst law enforcement.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: When they get to the city limits of Beverly Hills
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: and they see that famous Beverly Hills city limits shield,
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: or they see the white street signs that distinguish it
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: from Los Angeles, they know they better be careful because
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: the cops, Because because the city can spend so much
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: money on its own protection, the cops have a very
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: famous three minute response time. They're there are police everywhere today.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: It has the most cameras in just about any other
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: place in the world. They've they've got a very sophisticated
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: system that links not just the cities and the police's cameras,
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: but other cameras all over the city. Yeah, it's and
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: they're they're very I'll tell you sorry. I was interviewing
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: the great movie producer Jerry Wintrob who did the George
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: Clooney Brad Pitt Oceans eleven movie Easy to the Karate.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: He managed Elvis. He you know, he had a great career,
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: And Jerry was at his house interviewing him, and the
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: police showed up in the middle of the interview and
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: somebody had been murdered on a house over because Jerry's like,
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: why are the police here? Somebody had been murdered, you know,
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: I feel like a week or so before a house over,
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: and they were asking to see his security camera video
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: to see if it was pointed when at the next
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: door neighbor's estate when the incident happened. So they're very
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: shrewd and smart about how and where they can collect evidence. So,
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: you know, with that kind of fame, the ability to
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: be scrutinized, it's it's a very unique little island right
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: in the middle of Los Angeles. It's it's it's a
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: temp It's tempting, I think for people who who have
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: big dreams of idiot pig it's tempting for people to
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: abuse their power. But it doesn't. It rarely works out.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: All I'm wondering do they pay those officers enough that
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: they actually live in Beverly Hills too, or do they
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: drive in from l A.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: Almost nobody on the forest lives in Beverly Hills.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: I was wondering how they could afford it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: They do make good money, bye, by police officer standards,
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: you know, by their by their peers in other parts
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: of LA They're they're well compensated. It's it's a good
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: gig to get and it can often go long stretches
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: without serious, really serious crime, so you get to just
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: kind of play with state of the art crime fighting
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: tools and go about your business. Guse me, but it's
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: like you can't really afford those you know, multimillion dollar
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: estates in right. You might be able to rent an
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: apartment in the in the South End if you want
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: your kids to go to Beverly Hills High School or something,
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: But that's about it.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, when you are a crime journal list and
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: now that you've written this book, how do you balance
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: maintaining that sense of objective objectivity while still looking at
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: the human and emotional aspects Like with why nonak you
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: know you covered her in court? How do you balance that?
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I think you know. Part of it is integral
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: to the experience of being a journalist. If you are
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: if you're a journalist of any you know, ethics and
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: following professional long standing standards, so you have you have
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: to come in with that objectivity. It's difficult when people
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: are in pain, when people are suffering, when people seem
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: to be evil, you might want to judge them as
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: evil and it's add on to that in Beverly Hills,
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: the prospect that you know, the suspect, the culprit, the victim,
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: any one of them could be a very famous figure,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: a very powerful influential figure. So it's you kind of
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: I got to keep your remove that much more because
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: all those things can influence what you're doing. And I
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: would say as I matured, I gained an even greater
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: ability to kind of look at everybody's story and why
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: did they do what they did? And so you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: twenty years ago, when I was covering something like when
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: on a writer, I might have been a little bit
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: more judgmental. How could somebody writing so high do something
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: so silly and get themselves in so much trouble that
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: had that sounded ridiculous. Now I understand, you know what
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: she was going through, and you know there is a
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: price to fame. I see it. You know, I've been
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: covering entertainment long enough that I that I see where
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: those prices are paid. And people, you know, can't always
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: cope with with all the success that they're experiencing, like
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: and you never know what's going on behind the scenes.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: So it's you take that sort of basic tenet of
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: journalism of trying to be objective and then you really
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: have to work on it as you keep up with
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: your career, because it's it's easy to let it slip.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: I think that's a really rare balance to be able
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: to do that. So what was the research process like?
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: Because you seem to have some information that wasn't just
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: readily out there, So it made me wonder, did you
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: have some original case files or you did say you
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: talked to a couple of officers that you know, So
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: tell me a little bit about that.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: Beverly Hills Police is extremely reluctant to give out any
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: case file type information, so I wasn't looking over anybody's
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: shoulder at cases. I did get to talk to some
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: retired police officers who are more free to say things
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: than they might have been when they were on the job.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: It's actually quite expensive that it's very tricky to get
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: a public records report out of Beverly Hills. You have
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: to ask specific questions, you have to pay a fee,
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: and if you don't ask the all the right questions,
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: you're not going to get all the information they give you.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: It's very selective what they released you, so that just
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: meant a lot of you know, I've had thirty years
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: of wondering about some of these cases, and the tinkering
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: around with my free time. It's almost like a hobby
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: for many years to get this information. And then now,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: you know, I've I've started out going to the library's
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: LA Public Library, Beverly Hills Public Library, looking at old microfiche,
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: old newspapers from the twenties, the forties, you know, you
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: name it. And now it's even easier to do that online.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: And then I read, you know, I talk to people.
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: I've had thirty years to talk to people about things
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: as I've encountered them. I've had I've got a you know,
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: bookcase full of books about Hollywood history and Beverly Hills
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: history and the history of the industry. And I would
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: trip over crazy things. If you've read I know you've
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: read the introduction. There's the Alfred Hitchcock story that opens
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: the book. I that in the in the research for
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: other stuff. I'm like, this is great. I've got probably
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: you know, six seven biographies of Alfred Hitchcock here, and
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: I'd never read that story before.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: I had not heard it. But I will tell you
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: I at first, when I was reading it, I was like, Okay,
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I'm waiting for the line that says, oh, I'm just kidding.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: So I was like, he really had these people arrested
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: and take into the police station and then had them
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: dinner served there all is a plot thing. I mean,
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: I was just I was really waiting for you to
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: tell me it was a joke.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was a notorious, practical joker, and yeah, kind
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: of a little bit cruel in the joke. Yeah, and
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: this was one of them. But boy, I mean, imagine
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: being in that room. And that's why I loved that story.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: It was such a perfect metaphor of being in Beverly Hills.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: You're surrounded by celebrity and fame, you're living kind of
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: a high life, and all of a sudden the police
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: walk in and they're rounding you up, and you end
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: up thinking what did I What did I do? Or worse,
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: how did they find out what I did? You know?
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: And Hitchcock knew that. I mean, he played us like
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: that in the movies and he knew how to do
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: it in real life. But yeah, that was such a
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: fantastic little anecdote. I could not resist using that to
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: open the book because it just kind of encapsulated the
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: whole experience of Beverly Hills.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Noir, I did.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: I thought it set the tone perfect, But like I said,
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: I was a little disappointed at myself because I really
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: wasn't buying it. So you got me there.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: No. I wanted to do it proud by by by
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: luring you think you did.
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: I think you did. He would be proud me. Not
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: so much proud of myself, but he would be prold Now,
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: with the cases you covered in this book, which one
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: did you find the most challenging to write?
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: Probably in terms of how horror horrible really the story
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: is is the hostage situation at Van Kleef and our
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: Pals in the eighties. It's probably the worst thing that's
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: ever happened in Beverly Hills, biggest body count, and it's harrowing,
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: you know, And it's tough to spend a lot of
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: time in that world writing it knowing that it happened
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: to real people.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say it. I was, like I told
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: you earlier, I was shocked that it was just one person.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: I don't want to give too much weight because I
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: do want people to go and buy it and read it,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: but I always thought it was more than one person
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: who did it.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: I know how much pain it caused the police department.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: You know, I talked to people when it was only
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: really ten years old, you know, it only been it
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: only happened ten years earlier, and I talked to some
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: of the police officers involved, and you can just see
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: that it just nobody, nobody walked away from that feeling
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: anything but horrible.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: And it's I don't see how they could because I mean,
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: and I love that everybody stood up for the police department.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: Or not everybody, but most of the people did that
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: lived there. And I really liked that because you don't
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: see that in a lot of other places.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and and Beverly Hills is things are shifting a
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: little bit. But but historically Beverly Hills has been a
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: very pro police community. Like they really turn out to
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: support their their police officers, and they you know, pay
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: them well, they treat them well. It's it's a big
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: police booster city and and that's always been the case.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: It's a little there's always a faction now that seems
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: to be looking for the Beverly Hills Police Department to
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: make a mistake that they can jump on, and you know,
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: inevitably they probably will do something that's going to cause
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: cause us here when they're when they're that closely scrutinized.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: But it's yeah, that was the night. That was like
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: the happy ending. As best you could get out of
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: that story was that the police got the sort of
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: community connection they needed to take their work to the
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: next level, so something like this would be less likely
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: to happen.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: Agree. Agree, I thought it was great. Now since writing
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: this book, in doing research, has it changed how you
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: view the city or its history.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: What it did was it made me realize I got
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: to see the evolution of Beverly Hills. If not to
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: be cliche, but but Beverly Hills is the main character
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: of all the stories. It's the one character that consistently
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: appears in all the stories of the city itself in
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: different time periods, and so you see the very evolution
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: of Beverly Hills over time. But you also see that
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: the city has not changed all that much. At its core,
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: it's still an enclave of wealthy and famous people trying
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: to protect what they have and expand you know, their fortunes,
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: and people trying to take that away and magnified by
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: that lens of fame, and you see stories like you
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: know the story of from nineteen fifty one with the
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: producer Walter Wager, the actress his wife is at the
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: actress Joan Bennett and her lover and agent Jennings Lang.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: That turned into this love triangle that goes violent, that
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: could happen tomorrow.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: That one felt much more modern to me, even though
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: it happened so long ago. I was when I was
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: reading that because I did not know that story at all,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: so it was new to me. I was like, that
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: is something you could pick up the newspaper and read tomorrow. Yeah,
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: it was like the first of those.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: The only difference being is that she would probably come
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: out being treated more kindly.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she was not treated very kindly. I mean I
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: did like, was it Bob or Bing Crosbie? Was that
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: who her neighbor was, or Humphrey Bogart. I was like
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: one of them, one of the good looking guys, gave
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: her a job and went to battle for her. Don't
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: laugh at me for calling them good looking guys JT.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: They went to bat for her because she was not
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: treated well. And what I found even more interesting, he
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: was doing the same thing she was doing, but she
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: was the one who was vilified.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: For it.
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: A lot of it had to do with the standards
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: of the day, the patriarchy that that kind of ruled
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: the country, the world, Hollywood in particular at that time.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: A lot of it had to do with her fem
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: fatale aura that she had from the movie role she played.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: She'd been a sweet blondage in you As.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: As a young actress, she darkened that hair.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: She moved into the world of noir, and all of
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: a sudden she was the one that they wanted to
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: kind of lay blame on. And and I think also
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: a lot of the Hollywood well, a lot of water rangers,
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: all with peers, ran to his defense, finally realizing that
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: that could happen to them. They could, they could be
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: on top of the world in Hollywood, and something could
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: could push them over the edge, and they didn't want
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: to see it happen to them. So they they had
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: a lot more compassion for him when it was just
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: than they did when it was just business trouble.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: Why they went and donated money to pay his bond
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: and to get him legal representation.
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and I mean, look, look at the lineup
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: of all these top producers of the day, including Walt Disney.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: Walt Disney gave five hundred.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: I was like, Walt, what are you boy? What my boy?
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: But I was surprised because when he was having financial troubles,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: he was like a hot potato and they dropped him.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: They wanted nothing to do with it. Then he shoots
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: and kills somebody, and they're like, oh, let me give
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: you money to get you out of jail, let me
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: get you a place to live, let me get you
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: an attorney.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: And I was like, what, he didn't kill the guy.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: But he did, That's why.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: And he didn't die.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: He is just a certain area of his anatomy that
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: that figured into the fact that he was sleeping with
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: his wife. He kind of put that in danger.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: He killed a part of him.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: The other thing you know mentioning Humphrey Bogart that I
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: love is that Bogart was the neighbor of Walter Ranger
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: and Joan Bennett in Holmby Hills, which is like very
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: right adjacent to Beverly Hills, even even wealthier enclave. And
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: he went to see Wranger in in jail and then
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: he gave later he gave Joan Bennett a part, and
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: we're no angels, so he didn't take sides.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: I'm I mean, there's still I have so many questions
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: just about that story because I'm just like Walt, and
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: I would have to sit down and have a talk.
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: I'm like, he was in financial trouble. When you were
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: in financial trouble, people helped you, but you go in
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: helping when he did that.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: So and he he had a pretty substantial comeback. Walter Ranger.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: He know, he went back and did as an independent producer.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: He did he took inspiration from his experience in the
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: prison farm and made a like a reform minded movie
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: called Ride Insaw Black Number nine. And then he took
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: up the cause of I'm just blanking on the on
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: the real person's name. But for the movie I Want
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: to Live. That was a real case, a real true
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: crime story that that he brought to the screen because
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: he felt that Barbara Graham, the woman who was at
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: the center of that case, had been wrongfully imprisoned. And
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: he won Susan Hayward and Oscar in the Bronx. So
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: he had a good career until adultery. Tripped him up
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: yet again.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: And then again he did not learn his lesson.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this time it was somebody else, but it was
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: another you know, a couple of famous people flowing around,
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor on the side of Cleopatra,
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: and that completely you know, that that that their infidelity
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: on that movie turned the public against it. And it
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: was already the subject like remember when Titanic. Before Titanic
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: came out, everybody's like, oh, this is going to be
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: a bomb, it costs so much money, and that that
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: was already happening with Cleopatrick. But then you gave like
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: the public a real reason to turn away, like, oh,
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: she's cheating on her husband with their co star, you know.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: And that was the end of Walter Wanger's movie career.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I found that kind of interesting. Now,
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: with true crime being such a popular genre today, what
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: are you doing to ensure that your book stands out?
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: I think, you know, the Beverly hillsiness of it was
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: is the hook. But the story is the stories. You know,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: the stories you can't help but trip over a celebrity
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: in every one of the stories. So there's there's it's
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: got that star studed quality that puts you smack into
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: Beverly Hills. But they're all such interesting stories. They all
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: have such twists and turns that are real life, and
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: sometimes on a macro level and sometimes on a micro level.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: Like you know the story was with Frank Sinatrind Dean Martin.
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: Did it change history or did it change Hollywood? No?
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: But when you read it, you're like, Oh, what a
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: weird thing for these two extremely famous men to be
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: going through after getting into like a simple bar fight
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: that they should have known better than to get into,
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: and then having a guy end up in a coma
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: and they've got to sweat it out to see if
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: they still have careers at the end of the day.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: Like that's that's a story you don't hear about two
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: very famous guys very often. So I wanted to really
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: dig into it. And you know, I think probably the
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: nicest compliment I've gotten about the book is people said
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: that they felt like they were in the room when
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: things were happening, and that was that was one hundred
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: percent what I wanted to get to. I knew I
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: could gather up enough detail to make you feel like
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: you were kind of standing there over eavesdropping on it,
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: and that's that's what my life is.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you did. You did a good job
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: of that. You did a really good job of that.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: Now I do want to know did you leave out
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: in the cases that you covered, did you leave out
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: any details because they were just too salacious to be
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: in there.
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: That's a very good question, one thing that leaps to mind.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: And no, I won't ask you to share it, but
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: I just want to know.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: This is another one in a story that I didn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: make it into this addition, and hopefully we'll come around.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: There's there was some information that was obscured by the
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: police at the time in the nineteen seventies, like some
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: victims were given fake names in the in the media,
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: and I could have probably tried to push to find
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: out who they were, but I was like, what's what's
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: the point. They were the victims. They don't need to
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: they don't need to relive this if they're still alive.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: I didn't want to dig in that deep. I didn't
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: think that was necessary information. I'm trying to think if
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: there's anything there's something in the woodnowna rider uh story,
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: there was a there was a little side road I
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: could have gone down about another very famous person that
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: I chose not to. I went down it a little bit,
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: but there was so much more that I could have done,
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: and I chose not to because I didn't need the
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: trouble from this very famous person and it wasn't that relevant.
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: It was it was almost like a whole other story.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: So maybe the sequel, but yeah, that was about it.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: Other than that. If it was anything that I didn't
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: there was certain things that I just didn't know and
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: I didn't have I don't I don't think I could
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: have pushed any further to find out. But as a
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: as a historian, I know things are going to come
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: up that are gonna make things in my book inaccurate,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: if that makes sense, Like new information will eventually be
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: unearthed and I'll be like, oh, I don't have the
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: perfect version of the story, and it's gonna drive me crazy.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: But that's what that's that's the you do the best
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: you can do.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: Say you got to do the best you can because
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: out of all of the stories I read, I don't
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: know why, but there's something in my gut on a
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: couple level, I'm like, I still think there's some secrets
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: that could be uncovered.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: Can you give me a good example and maybe I
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: can enlighten you well, So like.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: The cat burrellar, Yes, I don't know why. I I
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: think there's just something in there about that story because
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: it was just got away with it too easy from
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: a period of time. And I know during that time
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: we didn't have the cameras, we didn't have the security systems.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: But how did you just go in and pretend to
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: be all of this and nobody didn't say, wait a minute,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know you that doesn't sound I mean it
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: just I don't know, maybe just because of the age
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: where now that you couldn't be that good of a
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: con artist.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: He was. He was very charming and he was very handsome,
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: which was disarming to people. And he looked the part.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: He looked like he belonged in the room with the
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: tuxedos in the champagne. And he was very clever like
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: he he failed a lot, like you see he almost
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: gets caught in Canada in New York like, he had
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: his failures, but he learned every time and he got
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: better at his gig and he wouldn't have got caught
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: other than for a wild coincidence. That's the one thing
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: that tripped him up and he almost escaped again.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: He escaped again.
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so he is an interesting guy. There's a I
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: didn't know a lot of his story for a long time,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: and I eventually found his daughter, and she was searching
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: for answers herself because she was born the year that
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: he passed away. He died of pancratic cancer, and so
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: she was born that same same time, so she never
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: knew him. And so she's been on this journey of
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: discovery as well, and we've been sharing things for many
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: years back and forth, and then finding out what happened
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: to him after he went out of the headlines.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: Was.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: When he went straight so to speak, or he you know,
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: lived a non life of crime.
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: Because I for many years i'd lost track of him.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: By the time he went into you know, went into
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: the prison system and got deported to Canada, then I
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: lost track of him. But thanks to you know, her
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: finding other family members who knew things, and thanks to
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: the internet being you know, finding finding much many more
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: things about him. Finding I found a series of articles
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: he wrote for Canadian newspaper that described his whole backstory
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: in much more detail. It was fascinating, and so that one.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: You know, I still I know there's still secrets there,
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: but like you know, he had he always had a
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: common law wife, he did.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: These women, I'm like, wow, And you.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: Know they knew more than they said they did.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, they had to have. I just stopped think of like,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: they have to have known and there had to have
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: been some stuff hidden.
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I can't say that outright in the book
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: because nobody ever else, nobody else ever said that right,
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: nobody faced any other criminal charges, like everybody went out
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: when you know, but they might have gotten the courtesy
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: because they were women at a time where women would
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: have been excused for being taken under the spell of
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: a man. But they may have also equally been involved.
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: So it's hard to say, especially all these years later.
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: That was nineteen forty nine, But I just like, I know,
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: that's another story where I'm like, there's gonna be I know,
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna find out something else and I'm gonna wish
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: I had gotten that in that book.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but that means you can just do a follow up,
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: you know later.
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: Now, the one thing I found interesting and I want
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: to know from your standpoint, do you think because you
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: had covered the entertainment side of Beverly Hills as well
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: as some of the crime side, that it gave you
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: a unique perspective to writing this book.
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. I mean I've kind of I kind of consider myself,
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: you know, tongue in cheek, a Swiss army knife of
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: entertainment journalists. I've done everything, you know. I've cover film,
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: I've covered television, I cover events, I do red carpets,
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: I do sit down interviews with people. And then before that,
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: I was knee deep in Beverly Hills doing the police
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: and the crime, but also the whole community. Like I
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: got a pretty holistic view of that community. I've written about,
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: you know, all these things in Los Angeles for local
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: magazines over the years, and so I've got a pretty
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: good bird's eye view of the ven diagram where Beverly Hills, crime,
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: celebrity intersect. And that has you know, knowing how the
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: industry works, knowing having a really good, up close, impersonal
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: view of celebrities for the last twenty years, in particular
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: being in their world, not just the rich, you know,
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: privileged world of Beverly Hills, but being right up close
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: in personal with celebrities gave me a lot of very
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: specific perspective, and I covered a crime in quite a while,
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: I sat through a court case in quite a while,
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: and I ended up covering a good chunk of the
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: Danny Masterson trial a couple years ago, which was really,
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: I hate to say it fun to get back into
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: that world again, especially because that was another very surreal
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: case of I've known Danny Masterson for many years, and
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: I can tell you honestly, I never particularly liked him,
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: but I didn't know that he was, you know, capable
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: of the things that he was convicted of doing. And
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: so that was that was interesting seeing somebody who I'd
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: encountered many times, seeing this whole secret world they've lived
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: in blown open, you know, in court. So yeah, it's
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: it's a I'm it's still not surreal the things I see.
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: It's still you know, I don't live that life. I
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: just lived near it or around it, and so I I, yeah,
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: what else can I say. I've observed a lot over
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: the years.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: The other thing I found interesting, and I think I
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: found it interesting because I just recently got a jury
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: summons and I am beyond excited hoping I get picked.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: I believe it was Winona's trial that one of the
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: people chosen for the jury actually worked for the studio
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: or the production company or something had put out some
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: of her films. How were they not disqualified?
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: I still can't understand that that, you know, closed door
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: meetings with the judge. The judge was ran Sony Pictures,
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: and she made three films for Sony Pictures during his tenure.
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: And it's like she's that's a business or arrangement, like
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: he was essentially her boss. He may not have been
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: in day to day control of the production, but he
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: could have stopped it or gave it more money or
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: whatever he wanted to at any given time. And that
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: he got he convinced the judge that he could be
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: impartial was mind blowing. And I don't I'm not saying
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: that I don't think he was. I don't think anything
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: unfore it happened, But I was shocked. Why would you
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: not just dismiss him out of hand? You know? And
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: that's to open I opened up that chapter talking about
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: the bizarre scene of we had a judge who had
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: been on you know, a bunch of celebrity cases. We
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: had a former studio head sitting in the in the
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: gallery or in the in the jury panel. There were
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: actors that would come and go a little character, actors
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: that I would recognize that were just coming to observe
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: the thing. We had celebrity lawyer Mark Garrigos was her attorney.
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: We had when owner Ryders sitting there. We had Marcia
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: Clark was covering the trials, sitting two seats down from me.
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: You know, it's that's Beverly Hill's justice right there. That's
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: that's usual.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: That's a movie. That is a movie that I need
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: see on TV. Because I got the jury summons the
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: same day. I was reading that part and I was like, oh,
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: maybe I won't get kicked off for being a true
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: crime podcaster and Beverly Hills. I wouldn't.
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I have never been placed on a jury yet
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: because I lead with yeah, I've covered a lot of trials.
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: I know, I know the system and most most lawyers
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: on both sides don't want me on a jury. But yeah,
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: one of these days I'm going to have to do it.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I just know it.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: I need.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: But JT's the one of us true crime duo that
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: covers trials. I'm not so much into the trials. I'm
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: more into I want to know what happened, why it happened,
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: and those kind of thing. But it's not my day job.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: So I'm hoping my day job will get me into
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: to the trial. We'll see. Now, I've got to know
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: if you could just sit down with one of the
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: people that you wrote about in Beverly Hills, Nore. I
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: want to know who it would be, and I want
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: to know what you would ask them.
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: Oh boy, So because I have so many different ways
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: I want to answer this question. Because if you ask
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: me about pure fanboy, I want I want to talk
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: to Dean Martin. I mean, I love Frank Sinatra, but
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: I want to have that conversation with Dean Martin because
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: number one, I want to know what the heck happened
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: exactly in that bar that night, because that bar, yeah,
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: nobody tells the same story, So I do want to
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: know that. But I also just want to talk to
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: Dean and I hear you know, I actually know. I've
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: interviewed a couple of his daughters and I'm actually I
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: didn't know this for a long time, but I'm friends
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: with his granddaughter. I didn't know that that's that's who
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: she was. But so he's somebody that I would I
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: would like to just for my own satisfaction when it
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: comes to the biggest mystery I want. I wish I
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: could talk to Edward Doheny or Hugh Plunkett who were
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: the murder suicide casualties in the very first murder in
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: Beverly Hills in nineteen twenty nine, because we still have
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: no idea what exactly went down, why it went down,
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: what the nature of their relationship was, and if I
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: could pump either one of them full of sodium pentathol
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: and get the story, I would do it in a hart.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: And the last one is just just because I think
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: he's so fascinating and cool and as you said, Terry,
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: like there's a lot of questions still there is Gerard Dennis,
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: the cat burglar from the forties, because I know there's
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: a zillion more stories that he never told that I
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: that I'd love to hear.
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say the murder suicide when kind of
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: pushed me where I was taking notes. So I have
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: a tendency when I read books, I take notes, and
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: I was taking notes and I started finding myself going
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: and googling stuff I'm like, Okay, you're not going to
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: start deep diving. I'm not going to go down a
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: rabbit hole because the gun was underneath, the gun was
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: being kept warm, but there was no fingerprints. My whole
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: little conspiracy brain, I was like, do do do?
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: Do do?
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: I was like, Nope, not going to do it.
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's it would just frustrate you in the end,
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: because that that murder suicide is almost one hundred years
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: old and it's still it's still you know, anybody's guests.
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: I mean, it looks like whatever the official story is
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: was nonsense and that it's completely the opposite. But but
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: at this point, all these decades later, how can we
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: get that answer? What's what's what's who's left to ask?
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: What evidence is left to turn up? And so it's
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: mind boggling. And you know, there's long rumors about what
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: their relationship was. Were they best friends? Were they more
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: than friends? And that's fascinating, but there's no proof of
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: anything there either. But yet it's persistent all these decades.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: So well, anythink about the time, you couldn't have come
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: out if they were more than just friends. But they were.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have a best friend, but we're not
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: that dang close. I mean, I don't know they had
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: some kind of special relationship whatever it was, but that
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: I decided not to go down that. Now, this doesn't
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: have anything to do with the book, but I'm gonna
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: ask one question, and I'm gonna let jt ask some questions.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Out of everyone you've ever interviewed, I want to know
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: who the coolest was.
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: Oh, you know, I'm hmmm, that's that's a tough one.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: Or we can't say in the last twenty year or
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: last ten years.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm of modern celebrities. I'll always tell you
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: that George Clooney is going to be who you want
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: him to be. If you ever meet George Clooney, he's
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: he's who, He's who he seems to be. He's a
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: good guy, he's you know, he's funny, he's smart, he's charming,
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: he's suave, he's he's you know, he's I have a
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: man crush on George Clooney. I just I get along
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: with him. He's great. He's just a really cool, cool dude.
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: I'm you know, they were my childhood heroes, like like
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: Adam West Batman is somebody that I that I really
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: liked I really might be interviewed him many times over
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: the years and grew to really really like him a lot.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek was another one. And I
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: had a tremendous amount of respect for Lauren Bacall, who
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: was tough as nails. But that's kind of again how
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: you wanted her to be. Shirley MC is a larger
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: than life figure and you know I couldn't. I couldn't.
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: You can ask for more than what she gives you.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: You know, as a person, she's she's what you see
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: is what you get. And her brother, Warren Beaty, is
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: one of my favorite people to talk to because he
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: is so notoriously elusive in his answers. Getting a straight
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: answer out of him is next to impossible. And so
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: it's a fun game to play.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: Oh, I love that.
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: It's a fun game to play.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: I love that well, I appreciate it. I'm gonna let
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: jt ask some questions now. I got general ones, sure,
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: I know, but I'm excited about.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: The I did have somebody who had sent me a message,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: like on the side here on one of my multiple screens.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: They were like, has he ever talked to Betty what
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: was it, Oh, the Betty White question, Betty White, I did.
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: I actually talked to Betty a number of times, And
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: that's another like she was absolutely delightful, like funny, they're
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: so funny.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: And but but sweet like that.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: She was like the coolest grandma you could ask for,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: and just just a doll, but a little twinkle in
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: her eye, a little bit of a little devilish sense
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: of humor. Yeah, Betty, I was. I was around like
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: when Betty had that big sort of resurgence starting kind
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: of with the proposal and and everything after, and spoke
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: to her on the phone quite a few times.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Like she was. She was.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: She was a truly delightful person.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: When I grow up, I want to be I don't
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: think she did any crimes.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to be her when I grow up.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: She's the worst thing, Isaac say. The worst thing she
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: probably ever did was accidentally keep someone's pen that she
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: borrowed to write a check or something. Sorry, I can't
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: imagine she ever.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: She genuinely beloved like anybody who worked with her thoughts,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: you know, and she worked with a lot of people
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: over the course of her career. Everybody was enamored of her.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, I hope Lady and Gray, who's
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: been in our chat for a while, I hope she's
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: glad that I was able to ask the question. I'm
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: just wondering, just real quick, in terms of the book.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've had contact with a lot of folks
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: in that world, and so I'm wondering it is very
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: evident that it did assist in a way in terms
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: of writing. Did it hinder you in any way, like
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: were there's certain things where you're just like, eh, like
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: did it impact how you wrote it?
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: Or you know, not in any specific way that comes
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: to mind. But I could give you like a hypothetical sure,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: like if if let's say, and this is not true,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: I'd had bad experiences with Winona writer before or after,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: I would have had to decide of him, am I
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: going to write about that? Am I going to be
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: subject active? And I I didn't have anything weighted one
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: way or the other. We've just had interview subject interaction,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: you know, so, but that would be something I would
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: have to take into consideration. I don't know anything especially
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: controversial or spicy about any of the police officers that
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: I wrote about in this book, but that is something
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: that could come up if I do more stories, because
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: not every police officer is perfect, and so you know,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: if it if it was, if it's relevant, then you
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: know sure, because I as you know if you when
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: you read the book, I love every little grain of
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: detail that I can give you, and I don't I
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: don't want to skimp on stuff. So I can't think
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: of any instance where I did do that in this,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: in this what's the stories here? But I know, I
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: know what, I know what the issues would be there
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: to wrestle with.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll promise, I promise. It wasn't a gotcha question,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and I did not at all. I really appreciate the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: fact that you were like I have to consider it
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: in the beginning versus like starting to write and being like,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: how can I arrange this? Because you do have to
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: ask that question right off the bat. Yeah, okay, awesome,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: And and obviously you're a fantastic storyteller.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: What what to you are the qualities of a great story,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: whether it be true or not? What do you what
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: do you think?
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: I you know, I it both personally and professionally. I
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: take in a lot of stories, right like I'm I'm
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: watching movies I'm watching television, I'm reading books, I'm reading
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: comic books. You know, story has been a part of
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: my the fabric of my life, and and then I'm
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: constantly telling stories. I saw something online the other day
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: where it said that I'd written right around three thousand articles.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: I'm like, that's only from one time span. I'm like,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: I've probably written three times that over. So I have
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: now a you know, it's it's an instinct. And so
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: these long form stories, it really is what's the where
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: are the twists and turns, what's the end? I always
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: kind of have to think about how satisfying is this ending?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: If it's not satisfying, how can I make it at
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: least satisfying in its ambiguity, you know, like what can
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: I do to make this close? This out? And then
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: it's about the characters, of course, and these are real
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: people and that did real things, And I'm not gonna
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: veer from that. I'm not gonna embellish it. I'm not
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: gonna I might tell you if I know something's a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: legend and I can't prove it and they've said no,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: that never happened, But I'll still tell you what the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: legend says. And indicated as such and give you that
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: color to work from, and then it's for me too.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: With these stories, a lot of it was tone, you know,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: like the Greystone Mansion murder had that very Chinatown kind
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: of tone where by the end you're gonna not be satisfied,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: but you're gonna stand that it was money and power
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: that keeps you from being satisfied with the results of
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: this story. With the cat Burglar story about jar and Dennis,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: that was kind of a romp. You're kind of rooting
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: for him along the way because he's so clever and
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: his adventures are so wild, but you know, at the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: end of the day, he's a criminal, and you do
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: need to know that. You want to feel that he's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: paid some kind of price, unless he completely got away
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: with it, in which case you might still be rooting
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: for him. I don't know. So it's it's finding those
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: kinds of things. You know, find that the Van cleveand
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: Arpel story is so tense and you know, puts your
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: heart in your throat and leaves you unhappy. But stories
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: have unhappy endings, So that's what That's what I was
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: looking for, was anything that it took you on a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: journey and the resolution kind of left you somewhere like
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: there was a destination, whether whether you come out going
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: I know everything about this now or you're like, I've
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: got more questions than ever. That's that's where I wanted.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: That's what I wanted to do as best as I.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Could, absolutely, And I mean, you know that destination. How
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: how do you ultimately hope that this this work? And
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: all you know, I would imagine there's kind of a
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: theme or or a thread through all of your work,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: But but how do you hope that this this book
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: will impact the readers.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: I hope that they get a sense, sort of a
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 4: deeper sense of Beverly Hills, because Beverly Hills is kind
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: of a state of mind. For it exists in the
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: pop culture in a way, but it's also a geographical
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: place where people live and send their kids to school
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: and you know, drive to work and all that same stuff.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: They just might live in a much more expensive house
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: and they might go to work on a movie set
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: or you know, the United Nations. It could be anything,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: And so I wanted to kind of bring that world
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: to life and also show that sort of consistency of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: how this almost mythical place of Beverly Hills, how it
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: has this consistency through its history, and crime is a
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: part of that. I kind of look at fame and
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: wealth to the average person has this like first, it
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: has an allure. You kind of wish you had it.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: You kind of fantasize about what that would be. Like
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: you pick like the people that you identify with, Like
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: I think George Clooney's great, like, but then if he
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: gets in trouble, you kind of are able to say, a,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: his life wasn't that great. My life's not. I didn't
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: get in that kind of trouble, you know, Like, and
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: I'm okay, I might be only making you know, a
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: quarter percent of what he makes, but like, I'm okay,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: he's now he's you see what happens. And then and
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: then there's that second narrative of rooting for them to
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: come back from the trouble they got in. And I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: think that that's addictive. I think that's why we like,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: you know, we like true crime for just the puzzlement
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: of it and trying to figure it out and understand it.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: We like celebrity because of those rise and fall arcs
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: and putting the two things together are just irresistible. So
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: I wanted to do that. I wanted to document the history.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: I had to get these damn stories out of my head.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: I've been thinking about them for so long. I finally
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: had time during the pandemic to get my stuff organized
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: and go at it. And I just I love that
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: I don't live in Beverly Hills. I live, you know,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: ten minutes out outside of Beverly Hills. I but I
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: that it's such an interesting world to me still, even
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: though I'm not like embedded in it, I'm still in
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: there a couple, you know, several times a week. And
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: it's just it's a weird. It's a weird, cool, intimidating,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: like you name it. It's got every kind of factor.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: And so I want to bring that to life to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: people and and sort of document this kind of unique
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: true crime history that the city has.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think it's so interesting too. And
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: your answer kind of made me think about something. Is
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: is you know, very few, very few folks get to
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: interact with somebody who has talked to celebrities or who
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: has interviewed them or things like that, and and so
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: for them not hearing some of those behind the scenes
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: stories about how they are and things. You know, you
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: have this Beverly Hills, shining beacon on a hill, very shiny,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: and it's very interesting how true crime presented in such
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: a in such a way, with integrity and ethics can
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: actually humanize appropriately a location that is just like that.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: And how do you how do you? I don't know,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just it's just the thought that I had and
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: I was just wondering how you how you thought about that?
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's you know, there's the humanity is the great level,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: or it's the thing that you can you can be
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: impressed or appalled by the details of a crime, right
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: like the mechanics of it, but it's it's the why
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: about it that's really gonna get you. I Mean, look
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: at what's going on right now with the Menendez brothers.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: You know, we've we've all been horrified. It's the worst
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: kind of crime you can think of, killing your own
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: family members, killing your parents. It's like almost unthinkable. And
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: these guys have been in jail for decades for having
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: done exactly that and done it on a on a
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: premeditated you know scale. But what pushed them to it?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: You know? And and our is our view of how
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: we view what pushed them to it changed since they
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: were convicted, and we have to think about that, you know.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: And and here it has opened up this whole you know,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: the Ryan Murphy series and has and the documentary on
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: Netflix has really opened this story up. And people in
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: a new generation that weren't around when the men and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 4: his brothers were on Court TV every single day and
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: at the topic of Jay Leno's and Daily Behavior Letterman's
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: monologues every night. They just see it as people who
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: they think are victimized and were pushed to this extreme,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: horrible act because of the extreme victimization that they experienced.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: I was at the house shooting a video for International
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: News Organization just a couple of weeks ago, and the
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: amount of young people that were flocking to the house
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: in Beverly Hills was it never stopped there was There
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: was always at least a dozen people there and they
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: were all under thirty. And wow, that's something about that
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: story has touched them in a way that it didn't
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: in different generations or or our generation is rethinking it.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: I'm ambivalent about the Menana's brothers myself, like I covered
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: the tail end of the second trial. I covered a
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 4: lot of it from the police perspective. I know the
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: police were fully convinced that, you know, what they did
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: was was premeditated and for the money. The abuse excuse
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: was mocked at the time. Now I think I take
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: that more seriously. I know people who lived through things
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: just as bad, and so I'm really curious what's gonna
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: happened in a few weeks, especially because our DA might
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: not be our DA in another week or so, right
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: in Los Angeles. So it's I just asked somebody if
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: I can cover the possible resentencing because I'm just so
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: curious about it. But that's, you know, if it wasn't
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: for how people were connected to what they think about
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: the brothers now, what they think about Lyle and Eric,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: now that made that story compelling to them, Whereas you know,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: thirty years ago it was simply Beverly Hills brothers killed
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 4: their mom and dad and that was her. How could
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: these kids in the height of privilege do something so
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: right horrible?
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's what I grew up, you know.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 3: Listening I think back then, and it was always like
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: they had every advantage, they have everything that so many
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: people want and yet they did this. But there was
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: so many things that we weren't told. Yeah, and now
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: it really makes you stop in question. Wow.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and especially you know to your point, the second
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: jury wasn't told a lot of it, right. The DA
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: was you know, they they wanted to win this case.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: It was post O J. Simpson. They they want to
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: feel that want the public to feel that wealth and
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 4: privilege was going to get everybody off. And they were
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: eager and they and they you know, they the trial
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: might have been conducted differently, but they were eager to
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: put this case behind them. The judge, the the you know,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: the prosecutors and so the juries on the jury on
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: the original trial would tell you that they heard stuff
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: that the people on the second trial were not permitted
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: to hear. So I think that is it is very
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: fair to evaluate that this time around and said, you know,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: have the brothers served longer than necessary? I don't know
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: what the I couldn't predict what the outcome is going
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: to be, but I'm so curious.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: I am.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: I'm curious too, Yeah, oh absolutely, I just I just
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: have just just a couple more things. You know, we're
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: always in search of good reads obviously, yours was a
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: very good read. Are there any other books that you
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: kind of put up there as some of your favorites
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: for our viewers?
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: Just yeah, especially in the either true crime or sort
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: of crime genre.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: Like in my gateway drug I would call it. It
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: was a book called Goddess. It's a book about Marilyn Monroe.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: It was published in the eighties by a journalist named
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 4: Anthony Summers, and it's probably the closest to a definitive, grounded,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: realistic investigation into her entire life, but particularly her death.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: It's still in print. I think you can still pick
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: it up pretty easily. I just Netflix recently had a
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: documentary that included a lot of his original interview tapes
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: that I opened my mind. Maryland such a crucial figure
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: in the history of Hollywood and connected to so many
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: different people and so many moments in time.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: That that was.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: That was that.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: I've reread that book not that long ago, and it
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: was still just as compelling as when I read it
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: when I was a teenager. Wow, I'm a I'm a
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: big fan of James Elroy as far as fiction goes,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: But his fiction is people want to call it, you know,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: sometimes I want to characterize his crime fiction or pulp fiction,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: but it's in its way it's historical fiction because he
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 4: weaves his stories around in La that used to be
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: and and his vision as a as a you know,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: Native Angelino of what LA was when it was loaded
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: with crime. I mean, when I read newspapers from the
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: fifties when I'm doing my research, I'm like, this is
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 4: what James Elroy read every day as a boy. This
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: is why his worldview exkews this way, because there was
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: a lot of crime going on and lot of crime
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: reporting going on. So and he's he's his especially his
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: you know, La Confidential is to me the master work
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: of his of his output. I like the books that
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: I've read by John Gilmore, who is once upon a
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: time actor who delved into the dark world of LA.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: He knew a lot of famous people, so he had
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: like personal stories to draw from. But he's also dug
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: into things like the Black Dahlia. That's somebody that I've
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: taken inspiration in. Uh and then The Devil in the
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: White City is another great true crime book. I just
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: was talking to Stacy Schuer, who's a producer. She worked
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: on pulp fiction The movie, pulp fiction, and many many
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: other big hits of the nineties and two thousands, and
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: she's trying to turn that into a television mini series
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: and I can't wait to see because that is talk
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: about feeling like a fly on the wall of the
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: you know, nineteen thirty nine or whatever. I forget what
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: you're not, but the world's fair like and the murder
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: happened there. That is an astonishing piece of work.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: I can't that's something that is.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: Sorry I was gonna say, I can't confirm you can
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: get Goddess on Amazon. I just purchased it.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: It's a good way.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: I just purchased it.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: That because it's it's AHH Holmes, right, I mean Devil
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: and White City's basically I should have read it. But
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: what I have a show on Wednesday's called The Transcript,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: and we read original court documents and court transcripts and
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: things like that. And one of the things I was
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: able to find was the original transcript from his trial.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: And there is something that I didn't know. I had
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: no idea he ended up representing himself for the most part.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: There are things that I learned. It's just fascinating.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 4: I love stuff like that.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Oh yeah. I can dig into that all day,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: all day, because I put myself in those shoes. You know,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I see, I see it. I hear transcript and I
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: think script right, and I'm like, oh, it's a show,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: On that note. One one thing that I it was
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 4: not thinking about going into this book, but discovered was
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: how embedded these stories became in like pop culture. You know,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: the first story, the Greystone Mansion murder suicide. Raymond Chandler
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: writes his own solution to that in one of his books,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: The High Window. You know, he he got, he knew,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: he knew the investigator, he met him, they were The
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: investigator went on to become a pulp writer. So they met,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 4: and Chandler also worked in the oil industry, which the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: Dheany family was at the top of the world in.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: And so that you know that story and the reality
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: that Chandler believed happened. He wrote about it kind of
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: distantly disguised in one of his books. Then you know,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: you look at Gerard Dennis, the ca burglar. He sold
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: his life rights to be turned into a movie.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: Because it wasn't against it wasn't against the rules back then.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: Back then, So you know, and then the story with
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: Walter Wayger and Joe Bennett and Jennings Lang. Like movies
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: came out of that, Like I mentioned, you know, I
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: Want to Live Right and Cell Black Number nine, they
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: all went to have on have movie careers. The movies
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: that they made impacted the entire industry in different ways.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: Joan Bennett, even Struggling, made Dark Shadows, which is a
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: cult favorite today. Yeah, you know, uh, back to the
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 4: Greystone thing, you know, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: Blood Shot a scene in Greystone Mansion. The movie itself
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: is about the father of one of the dead people.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: You know, it's it's it's a loosely disguised biography of him.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: It's the impact of the movies, even when you're a rider.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: You know, said she was auditioning for a part in
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: a movie, in a movie that that you know, didn't
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: seem to actually be true, but that was her excuse.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 4: And then later because of all the publicity that Sacks
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 4: Fifth Avenue where she shoplifted from that, the bad publicity
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: that they got from being part of that whole story,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: they went to Steve mar and the producers of A Shopgirl,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: which was the movie she said she was auditioning for,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: and they got themselves put as the location in Shopgirl.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: Like all of this weird synergy of movies and true
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: crime and that and the thing that, yeah, it's it's wild,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: but that's the I mean, even the great movie The Apartment,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: Billy Wilder's you know, Oscar winning film from nineteen sixty
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: was like inspired by the fact that Jennings Lang and
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: Joan Bennett were running off to an apartment being kept
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: for Marlon Brando when he was coming to La that
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: was right around the corner from the agency, and that's
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: where they were having their affair. And the great director
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: and writer Billy Wilder took that germ of a notion
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: and wrote this amazing film with who were we talking
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: about earlier, Jack Lemon, Shirley McLean, You know everything, everything
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: ties together in somewhere. I was reading it just for fun.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: I was reading a biography, a memoir that David Niven wrote,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: and I found a huge chunk of something that I
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: needed from one of my stories, just because I was
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: reading it for fun. Everything is so interconnected, it's I
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: can't tell you the serendipity that that happened in in
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 4: finding things for for this book.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: Well, I can't wait.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: Those connections. They'll just drive you further and further and
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: harder and harder. It's fantastic. So, uh, can you share
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: any with us any upcoming projects? Do you have anything
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: in the works, What's what's what's next? That's I'm sure
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: you get that question. The next one, well, yeah.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: The Luckily, if enough people by the first one, hint, hint,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: everybody watching and listening, then I've got the second one
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: is almost entirely ready to go. I've written let's say,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: eighty percent of it is ready to go, and I
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: just have to add a couple chapters I want to
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: for to make it fun. So let's hope. I'm kind
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: of taken a breath because really this has been a
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: whirlwind and I've had a lot of personal stuff that
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: had happened in bookending, like the experience that I've kind
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: of had to also deal with. So like now we're
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 4: just like the industry, My industry is in disarray with
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 4: the you know, coming out of the strikes and the
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: contractions of streaming. So I'm you know, I'm working. I'm
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: still with my longtime client, People magazine and doing a
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: lot of stuff for them, but I'm I'm also trying
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: to figure out what my next moves are now that
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: I've shown this big long form ability, and then I'm
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 4: getting some emails and some calls about TV film.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: I was gonna ask something like that, so.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: As I say, you know, from your lips to Ted
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: Sarandos's ears over at Netflix, because.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: I've heard that's a good spot to be.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 4: I do think there's a really there's a lot of
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: potential and I've I've gotten some inquiries that seem to
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: agree with me. So that's very very early stages, but
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: that is definitely a much much hoped for. I'd love
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: to have the resources to dig even further into these cases,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: but also more. You know, I've got Like I said,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: I've I've probably got a good hundred cases that I
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: could fill up books with.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: If you need some research who likes to go down
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: rabbit holes, you know how to reach me because a SHGT,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: I don't sleep much and I really like to go
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: down rabbit holes. Nothing but one little thread can lead
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: you to this thread, to this thread, to this threat.
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 4: I gotta tell you there's a story. It's it's I've
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: I've got it for the next book, and I'm hoping
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 4: to tie the knot on this thing. But there's a
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: guy that is a critical player in the story, and
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 4: I believe, I have every reason to believe he's somebody
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: who went on to become a very accomplished rock and
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: R photographer of bands in the sixties and seventies, one
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: band in particular, and I want, I want to besmirch
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: the guy if I turn out to be wrong, but
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: I'm ninety nine percent sure, and I just I haven't
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: made that final connection. But it's like, that is the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: hunt that I live for. I love trying to find,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: you know, seal the deal. I'm like, I got a
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: sneaking suspicion and the bread combs gradually lead me there.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: I'm a firm believer. When you get enough of those
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: crumbs and your taste bud start watering, you know you're there.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: You just need that last, little, last little smidge.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: I read a lot of Batman comic books when I
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: was a kid, and that was when he was in
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: his big detective mode, and so yeah, I believe in
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: the power of good detection.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: Oh for sure. And with all of that, I think
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: it's really important that our folks who are watching in
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: their homes or hopefully not driving, Please don't. But how
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: can they How can they discover more about about you
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: and the work that you have? Where can they find you?
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: I mean, I'm I'm all over the internet because I've
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 4: written for so many different publications and I really need
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 4: to get a one, one stop place so that people
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 4: can go to to find me. I'm having a lot
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 4: of fun on Instagram with both my own page and
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: with Beverly Hills Noir's page, posting you know, photos that
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: I have have the rights to use and things like that,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 4: and doing little teases for some of the chapters and
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 4: things around that. So that's that's a place where I've
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: been having having fun.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: Hull, It's good, I've been I like that.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 4: And then yeah, like and I'm always out, I'm always
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 4: like this. Last I posted something on my own Instagram
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: where I realized, like, in the space of a few days,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 4: I had interviewed Nicole Kidman and so Always Saldana and
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: uh Tom Hanks and Robert Zemechis and Angelina Jolie and
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: you know, it was non stop because I was covering
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: a film festival and that was.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: That for Here Here, Yes? Was it the movie Here? Yes? Yes,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: I'm excited about that one. Sorry, I didn't mean to
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: interrupt you. I apologize.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 4: I was excited too. And I finally got Tom Hanks
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: to tell me a story I've been wanting to ask
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: him for years, which was is you can find on
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: people dot com. He posed for a photo back in
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: the days when he broke out with Big and he
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: posed for a photo with Jimmy Stewart because their careers
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: were sort of on parallel tracks. It seemed at the time,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: you know, very very boy next door transitioning into serious roles.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: And so I asked him about his experience with Jimmy Stewart,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: who I'm a big fan of, and he told me
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: a story on the red carpet that must have taken
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: him five six minutes to act out. He did it
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 4: Jimmy Stewart impression and told the whole thing. So that's
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 4: on people dot com. Just google Tom Hanks, my name
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: is Scott Hoover and Jimmy Stewart and it'll come right up.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: I love that. I love doing that stuff like that.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: So yeah, hopefully soon when I have a minute to
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: breathe around holidays, I'll get a proper website and destination
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: up so everybody can keep up with what's going on,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: because hopefully I've got a lot of big stuff right
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: around the corner.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: Nice. Oh, that's fantastic, Terry. Did you have anything?
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: No, I just want to say. I mean, I'm pretty
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: honest about what books I like and what books I don't.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: I enjoyed the book, so I would tell people, definitely,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: go get the book, and when you stay up till
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: three am reading it, don't be mad at me. Because
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: I was like, I'm going to just finish this chapter.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get to the next story, and I
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: will stop because I'm going to close out this. I
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 3: know it's done. But then I would see the title
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, ooh, I need to see what that's about.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: So then i'd read a little bit. I'm like, well, crap,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: and I gotta finish this one.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: The three am can be mad at me, but they
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 4: can also know that I was up until three am
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: because I was following, you know, some thread down a
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: rabbit hole to get that information.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you had to do what they have to,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 3: that's right. You won't be bored. You won't be bored.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: It was a really good book, and I'm really excited
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: and we will be sure to post on our social
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: media a link to where they can go and buy it.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's everywhere. It's Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 4: people can find it just about anywhere that they sell books.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you. And you have my one of my
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: favorite posters or pictures behind you of Costa Blanca, So
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: that's always perfect.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been I'm overdue for a good rewatch of Casablanca.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: I try to watch that every year, and I'm a
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: little looney.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: It's a it's a thing. I mean, you can ask
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: my eleven year old granddaughter. I've made her watch it.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: Well, thank you guys so much for having me. This
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: has been great.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: No, thank you.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we really appreciate you taking the time, especially on Halloween,
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: So thank you so so much.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: Did we mention Mike Culchak the night Stalker costume for
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: those who didn't recognize it because it was so obvious
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 4: that's who I am.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: No, we didn't because it's much earlier in California. Everybody
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 3: here is getting home from trick or treating.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I got a bag of candy waiting for me.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: Oh there you go.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: Go enjoy and so much in JT. You want to
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: take us, wrap us up?
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Sure. Thanks everybody for tuning into True Crime one time.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: We really really appreciate it. We've got so much happening
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: and so much going on of course, with seven shows
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: that released throughout the week, live and pre recorded. Thank you.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Feel free to share, Please share this episode. This would
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: be wonderful to share, not just for us, but for
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: Scott as well, to get to get the word out
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: even more about the book, and and and help him
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: sell so we can get a second a second one.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: We want a second one, yes, and and and as
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: I close out every please please please take care of yourselves,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: your friends, and your family and your community. Don't let
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: anybody dull your sparkle and shine on you crazy diamonds
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: shine on that's right.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: And as I always say, please stay safe, watch out
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: for crime because it's everywhere, and always enjoy your wine time.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: Bye everybody, We'll see you next guy.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 4: Eight